If You Lived Here (23 page)

“This place too skinny,” I say. “We’d have more room on a city bus.” “Mai.” Shelley sighs. “Everyone on the Internet who adopted babies in

Hanoi said we had to stay here. I hope you didn’t expect the Marriott.”

I watch Lap warily. He has already begun to haul our bags upstairs. I still want to find another hotel, but with all our luggage packed inside this building, how difficult will it be to get it out again?

From where we stand, the hallway leads beneath the stairs and then opens onto another long and just as narrow room, with couches and a couple of computer desks lining one side of it. Next to the couches, Hong Ngoc stands talking with a young man. He appears to be trying to edge his way around her, but each time he moves, she launches into another emphatic statement that immobilizes him. Finally, during one longer than usual pause for breath, he slips past her and hurries in our direction. “Ms. Shelley. Ms. Mai.” He holds out his hand like a diplomat. “Welcome to our Lucinda Hotel. I am Tri, your manager.” The young man is tall and

soft-spoken, stooped from the effort of making himself heard by shorter people.

Shelley, tall enough to look him in the eye, grabs his hand and shakes it. “You have no idea how happy I am to be here.”

Her enthusiasm disarms him. His face softens and he looks at her with concern. “You must be very tired.”

“Tired? No! I’m too excited.”

He laughs, then turns to me, becoming more formal again now. “
Chào cô,
” he says, which, literally, means “Hello, ma’am,” but which we both understand to mean “You’re Vietnamese.”

I feel irritated with his hotel for offering such unacceptable accommodations. “Hello,” I say in English.

Tri invites us to see our room. Shelley practically skips behind him up the stairs, chattering on about how interesting Hanoi looks, how thrilled she is to see her baby. I follow more slowly, trying to remember where Khoi told me he stayed and wondering if we can get a reservation there.

Our room, on the third floor, overlooks the street. The proprietors have managed to squeeze an astonishing amount of furniture into a space only a shoulder width wider than the double bed. In addition to the bed, it contains a bedside table (which, by necessity, sits at the head of the bed), a television set (at the foot of the bed), a wooden wardrobe, two tiny chairs with a tinier table between them (on which sits an ugly bud vase holding a scrawny little rose), and the mountain of luggage accumulating near the doorway as Lap drags more loads up the stairs. Off the front of the room, a sliding door opens onto a bathroom with barely enough floor space to turn around in. There’s a bathtub, small and cramped, that seems to have been placed here merely for show. The most notable feature of the accommodations is a wall-size photographic mural of a deserted island, all ocean and palm trees blowing in the wind, a taunt that the universe contains something better.

The place smells sour and moldy. The noise of traffic makes me feel like we’re standing in the middle of a busy intersection.

I look at Shelley. “I didn’t say Marriott. But, like, Econo Lodge or something?”

She ignores me. She squeezes—
squeezes!
—along the narrow space between the wall and the bed and pulls open the door to the balcony, which amplifies the noise of the traffic into something no longer bearable. “You’re not going to believe the view of the street, Mai!” she yells back in toward me.

Tri picks up two remote controls off the nightstand at the head of the bed. Holding them up in front of me, he instructs in Vietnamese: “Use the white one for the TV. The World Cup’s on channel seven. Use the black one for the air con.” Like a magician with his wand, he tips the remote in the direction of the air conditioner, situated above the balcony door, and gives it a push. Immediately, the machine begins to hum. Then he pushes the remote for the TV. On the screen, artificial turf appears. Men in yellow jerseys give each other high fives.

“Can I get Star TV?” I ask. An international network might carry
Oprah
.

His face betrays some mild disapproval. “Of course,” he says, but then his attention shifts to the game.

Lap walks in and dumps our last few possessions on the floor. “It stinks in here,” he mutters, then notices the TV. His eyes on the screen, he pulls out his handkerchief and wipes his neck. “What’s the score?”

“Zero to one, France.” “It stinks in here.”

“Mildew,” Tri says. “The air con will get rid of it.” They stare at the television. After all these years being around southern Vietnamese, it sounds strange, but also kind of wonderful, to hear people speaking with northern accents.

Shelley pulls open the door. “Mai! Come see this.”

She stands with her hand on the door, waiting. I will tell her that we have to move. I slip past Lap and Tri and along the narrow space between the wall and the bed to reach the door onto the little balcony. I take a place beside Shelley in the hot sun, leaning on the railing looking down. At the street level, I can see a dozen shops, some wide and spacious, hung with bright-colored blouses or lined with sleek cabinets filled with glis-tening jewelry and watches. Some are as narrow as our hotel, a tiny storefront holding nothing but a thin cabinet displaying batteries and a cheap

plastic stool on which a bored-looking teenager perches. Along the road, the traffic flows like a river running in the wrong direction, away from the lake. Hoan Kiem Lake. Now I know where we are. The traffic will continue on toward Dong Xuan Market. I look down at the press of motorbikes. “What’s the name of this street?” I ask, merely for confirmation.

“H-a-n-g D-a-o,” she tells me. “I don’t know how to pronounce it.” “Hang Dao?”

“I guess.”

Hang Dao. Why hadn’t I noticed? Below us, the traffic beeps and roars.

Now, I have my bearings. To our right, to the south, I can just make out the trees surrounding Hoan Kiem Lake. And to our left, to the north, lies Ngo Gach Street, which would lead me home.

11
‌

Shelley

y the time
we get back downstairs, the narrow lobby has filled with Americans, Hong Ngoc bustling among them like a cheerleader at a pep rally. Mai and I haven’t been upstairs much longer than half an hour,

but they look at us like we’ve kept them for weeks.

“Hey, y’all. Sorry,” I say. “I’m Shelley. This is my friend Mai.”

They introduce themselves quickly and inattentively, pulling together their water bottles and purses, cameras and caps. In one big crowd, they squeeze past us down the hallway toward the door. I hear names but don’t have time to pair them with faces. Eleanor Survey. Posie Elder.

J. Nathan Survey. Hal Chambers. Marilou Chambers. John Elder. One woman—I guess it’s Chambers—tucks a blue stuffed elephant under her arm and, with her other hand, grabs a plastic bag full of what looks like baby clothes.

“Should I run upstairs and get some things for Hai Au?” I ask Mai. I love the way that every sentence I utter points to the fact that I will soon have my baby.

“If you want these people to kill you,” she says, nudging me toward

the front door. Through the glass, I see some Americans already piling into our van and another one idling behind it. Our driver Lap paces up and down the sidewalk, peering toward the front door. We step into the heat and push ourselves inside the van. Behind us sits one of the couples, a pale-faced and doughy pair, prairie looking. “You’re the Surveys?” I ask.

They shake their heads. “Elder,” he says. “Posie and John.” They have on Adidas track pants and T-shirts to match. He’s navy; she’s purple. They swish when they move.

“So you got here last night?”

He gives a little nod. She says, “We’re still exhausted. Slept through the wake-up call and just had time to eat breakfast and get a taxi over to your hotel.”

Mai perks up at that information. “Where you staying?” she asks. “Hanoi Horison. It’s gorgeous. Even nicer than the Hilton we stayed

at in San Francisco. The American ambassador got married there.”

Mai tries to get my attention with her eyes, but I refuse to get into it with her. I have enough to think about without worrying over our accommodations. I stare out the window at the crowds, the storefronts, laundry hanging on the line, an old woman selling bananas. Isn’t it enough, I want to ask, that you are home? That I’m about to meet my son?

I need to settle down. Vietnamese officials won’t care that I sailed through my home studies and the American authorities declared me 100 percent fit to be a parent. Somewhere over the Pacific, they’ll tell themselves, I lost my mind. Well, could you blame me? There’s nothing natural or unstressful about an American woman, newly single, arriving in Vietnam to meet her kid. I do not mean to imply that I don’t already consider Hai Au to be mine, or that I don’t already love him. I love him so much that I left Martin for him. But—I’m not a fool—I know that it’s a fantasy love. I know his statistics: his size and weight (at a certain point in his life, at least), his birth date (as close as anyone can guess), his name (that, at least, seems fairly certain). But, honestly, I mostly love my own idea of him. Essentially, I’m talking about a meeting between two strangers here.

Behind me, the Elders sit silent, engaging, I tell myself, in their own little preadoption freak-out. Hong Ngoc, in the front seat, leans back and tries to converse with Mai in Vietnamese.

Hong Ngoc: Long long long phrases in a breathless, effusive voice.

More and more and more. Voice rising. Silly giggles. Mai: Word. Uninflected. Staring out the window.

Hong Ngoc: Soft thing, like a secret, like we two are the best of friends.

Pause. Waiting. Mai: Word.

Hong Ngoc: Shriek! This and this and this and this. Mai doesn’t answer.

Hong Ngoc: Louder! And fast! Over and over without stopping.

Lap breaks in, over the sound of the radio: Grumble. Short, to the point, effective.

Hong Ngoc shuts up.

After about fifteen minutes, we leave the congestion of the inner city and move into the less dense suburbs, residential areas dotted with small gardens and ponds that appear intermittently between the clusters of buildings. This is not the Vietnam where the little girl ran naked down the road. It’s urban and noisy, just going about its business. Bored-looking motorbike drivers pause impatiently in traffic and old ladies squat in doorways, exploring their mouths with toothpicks. The scene is different, but the expressions on people’s faces don’t look so different from what I’d see inside a Taurus on College Road or on the face of the girl at the guest services desk at Target. I wish Martin were here. I wish I were holding his hand. This is our great adventure.

And then we arrive.

I heard that the orphanage sat on the grounds of a hospital, and somehow, despite all logic to the contrary, I imagined a large Western-style building situated on a wide, green campus, with a homey little orphanage occupying some sunny corner, all picket fence and flowers. In reality, the hospital consists of five or six small concrete one-story buildings. As our van pulls through the front gate, I see that you could walk from one side to the other in less than three minutes. The orphanage itself is a compact,

utilitarian, L-shaped structure, five doors opening onto a porch that runs along a front walkway.

When we stop, a woman steps through one of the doors, strides toward the driveway, and, with her hand up to shield her eyes, pauses to watch us get out. “That my mom,” Hong Ngoc declares. Mrs. Huyen is robust, perhaps fifty, dressed in royal blue slacks and a matching blouse. Unlike her daughter, who looks perfectly Vietnamese, Mrs. Huyen has copper-colored hair and the round, bosomy body of a middle-aged matron from western Europe. Around her neck hangs a strand of blue pearls and a pair of glasses on a gold chain. She wears the kind of distracted, fleeting smile that people use when they pose for pictures.

“Shelley! And this must be Mai? You’re the only two I haven’t met.” Her accent sounds less European than Vietnamese, loud and slightly nasal, her pronunciation clear, her grammar perfect. Her manner, though brisk and polite, is also faintly impatient, as if to let us know that we’ve delayed the program. With a flick of her wrist, she ushers everyone along a flagstone path through a scraggly flower garden and into a room at one end of the building. Glancing toward the other end, I glimpse a simple wooden fence enclosing a section of porch. Three or four women, all wearing white jackets and slacks, sit on mats folding diapers. A couple of babies crawl on the floor beside them.